The new year is upon us and I’m working on planning my year! I spent last year using a Traveler’s Notebook to document family trips and noteworthy weeks that I wanted to remember. Most of my daily planning and scheduling was done digitally.

This year I’m trying a different approach because my children are all in school now and I’m working with more craft companies than I ever have in the past. The past few months have been filled with deadlines and projects that have required me to be much more structured with my time as a WAHM (work at home mom). So after some research and cutting back on a few craft commitments, I’ve decided to try an analog version of managing my time. This approach will also allow me to incorporate some creativity into my time management because let’s face it … it’s gotta be fun!

At this point you’re probably thinking this is overkill and you’re right. I don’t need THREE planners to manage my time. These planners will serve very specific purposes for me this year and I’ll outline my plans below.

CANVO JOURNAL

Last year Catherine Pooler released a bullet journal and a line of products to go along with it. The pages of this journal are much heavier than any of my other journals listed here today. The pages are designed this way to allow the user to use her line of inks and stamps on the pages without having to worry about them bleeding through to the other side. I’ll be using this planner to track my family. Not the day to day of our lives, but it will serve as a memory keeping tool. If you’ve read my blog before you know that I am a scrapbooker. This book will track our family milestones, birthdays, trips or any details about our family I want to document in Project Life. This won’t be something I pull out on a daily basis. Below are links to the products I have in my studio that I’ll be using with my Canvo Journal.

LET’S BE EXPLORERS

I am on Christine Herrin’s design team for her Everyday Explorer’s brand. I am a long time fan of her products and I would absolutely use this undated planner for my small business if I wasn’t on her team. The planner is broken into quarters. You don’t need to be a business owner to use this planner, however I’m going to be using it for my small business. It will be where I set goals, track those goals, track project deadlines and track my social media projects. This will be something I pull out daily to review deadlines, check my goals, plan blog posts and plan Instagram posts. You can find the Everyday Explorers undated planner on their website.

DOTTED GRID NOTEBOOK

This last notebook will be my “go to” for the year and something I pull out daily. I tried to bullet journal in the past, but never really committed to it. I’m starting this year with a commitment to use a dotted grid notebook for my bullet journal. The bullet journal method was developed by Ryder Carroll. I’ve spent the past week reading his latest book “The Bullet Journal Method”. It’s a review of the videos he has on his YouTube channel, but it also does a deep dive into the thought process behind the process. He provides several examples of how others use this method in a variety of scenarios. I’m a big fan of this analog method of planning due to it’s flexibility and simplicity. There are a lot of beautiful examples on Instagram of BuJo layouts and I hope to eventually get to that point with mine. However to ensure I stick to this habit, I’m keeping it fairly basic. Below are the products I’ll be using in my BuJo this year.

My 2019 habits that are posted on the letterboard in my studio.

I’m trying to keep a healthy balance between my family and personal goals this year. Since I’m a WAHM, it’s easy to get distracted and have days fly by having done nothing much other than housework & feeding my family. *laugh* I have a very small window of time where I can be productive during the day exercising, grocery shopping, cleaning, crafting, writing blog posts or editing photos while my kids are at school.

I don’t like to be up late doing anything that didn’t get done during the day and 2018 was filled with a lot of late evenings working on deadlines. I’m sure it will happen occasionally, but for the most part I would like to reserve that time for my family, self care or connecting with friends.

I plan to spend 30-60 minutes daily with these notebooks & planners. I might not be successful in using them as planned, but these are my intentions as I start 2019. I’ll be doing blog posts throughout the year giving updates on my progress.